


Captain Lundgren's Grand Idea

by aetas_obscura (aetataureate)



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-02
Updated: 2021-03-02
Packaged: 2021-03-15 10:09:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29806845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aetataureate/pseuds/aetas_obscura
Summary: On Stormtroopers, and how something can turn into what it never was before.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 3





	Captain Lundgren's Grand Idea

**Author's Note:**

> Published [on Tumblr](https://aetataureate-ao3.tumblr.com/post/186450994490/an-snippet-found-in-an-old-notebook-while-packing), July 2019. Originally written around June 2017.

Green was traditional, dyed in a manner scientifically determined to maximize camouflage in first the forests of Earth, then on Caprica and Persephone, and beyond to the entire Asimov ring. But humanity continued to reach out, to the burning reds of Jedha, the azure grasses of Xathron, and the pure ice white of Hoth. The old color serves its purpose in places like the forest moon of Endor, a shrinking minority in a widening universe. This is the time for something new.

Captain Lundgren in the Quartermaster’s office, who would never be promoted past major, came up with the idea. No matter the color of the soil under their boots, human beings bled red. For centuries, soldiers had been conducting blood sweeps on their battle buddies after every firefight, fingers raking across chest and back and inner thigh, checking every inch for red, red, red. They protected each other from their own adrenaline, the things it made them do and fail to feel.

White made things simple: a quick glance, thumbs up for white, thumbs down and a medic and quite a bit of screaming for red. A general liked the idea and even patted Lundgren on the back before he was forgotten entirely. Forgotten too were his notes, which remarked that in a scheme of red on white, it’s hard to know whether the blood belongs to you, or to your enemy.

The white armor outlasted bullets. The plating that began with the head-chest-back of each soldier has spread to every vital human part, but can’t deflect a blaster’s bolt of energy. There is no more blood, just bodies on the ground. Still, the white armor can be seen in every port, on every planet, in the seemingly empty vastness of space. It probably helps that the generals like the way it looks lined up in rows along the shining hallway of a star destroyer. It probably helps that as humanity reaches for the stars, in just the right lighting, it looks like the stars are reaching back.

Everyone knows that the clones were not the last to wear the armor. (His name is FN-2187, but he _is_ Finn.) Few remember that they were not the first.

(Your battle roster will be the first two letters of your family name, and the last four digits of your Social Security Number. Your planet of origin code and your Compressed Galactic ID. Your batch code and your birth order number, the serial number of your issued weapon, the only name you will ever know.)

An old woman, who speaks an older tongue, looks on your unit as it passes. “Sturmtruppen,” she says. Stormtroopers. You nod. It has a nice ring to it.

No one remembers who these people were.


End file.
